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Monthly Archives: November 2016

WARNING WARNING: This is a little less on the funny side and a little more on the serious self-reflection side.

*Please skip if you were expecting a belly laugh on this one, unless you find self-reflective vulnerability to be a hilarious subject? I mean if you do, boy do I got a doozey for ya ;o)

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SELF-SABOTAGE

“Behavior is said to be self-sabotaging when it creates problems and interferes with long-standing goals. The most common self-sabotaging behaviours are procrastination, self-medication with drugs or alcohol, comfort eating, and forms of self-injury such as cutting. These acts may seem helpful in the moment, but they ultimately undermine us, especially when we engage in them repeatedly.” (www.psychologytoday.com)

Hi. My name is Asha, and I’m a self-sabotageaholic!

I think we probably ALL get into a bit of self-sabotage from time to time, but lately – as I find myself on the cusp of some great advances in both my personal and professional life, I also find myself sabotaging… myself.

Ummmm, what the crap dude?

I practice the absurd art of self-sabotage and I’m very good at it. Go me! I won’t beat around the bush, I used to self-harm. I can say proudly that this is a thing of the now-distant past. I also struggle from time to time in the ‘self-medicating department’ with alcohol. But procrastination is my greatest foe right now. I go in search of things to take up my time – to distract me from forging ahead – and I seem to amass an impressive array of things to worry over. I ruminate about absurd things, things over which I have no control. I focus so much on the multiple hypotheses (in my mind) that I turn myself into an anxious, obnoxious mess, which only serves to alienate me. It’s a particularly unattractive trait.

In trying to identify some of the reasons behind this spate of self-sabotage hijackings, I’ve done a little research and followed it up with a fair bit of self-reflection. My main issues surround the following:

Fear

Fear of the unknown, fear of failure, and – it sounds stupid – fear of success. I guess for me it’s a tricky one. I want to write. I CAN write, yet I fear that at the end of the day I will suck, and that I’ll be found out to be the great big phony that I am. The prospect of that reality is utterly terrifying for me.

Challenge

They say that without a challenge we can’t grow, or move forward. Challenge is hard, challenge is at times scary and challenge is most of all – challenging! It’s the sort of thing that comes with a little or a lot of discomfort. Sometimes it’s even accompanied with pain – and pain is never comfortable! We’ve all heard the old saying “No pain, No gain” and while this is often associated with feats of a physical nature, it is also true for psychological weight-lifting.

Shame

This is the big one, shame opens the door for self-sabotage and rolls out the red carpet.

“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we’re capable of change” – (the brilliant) Brene Brown.

Shame is a horrible thing to live with. It’s a big old tattered trunk that we drag around behind us, constantly nipping our heels. It’s ugly, it’s cumbersome and it’s absolutely pointless. It’s what has us truly believing that we are not worthy. It’s deeply rooted in our belief system and is a son-of-a-bitch to kick to the curb. Brene explains that the best combat to shame is empathy and essentially allowing yourself to be vulnerable. Most of us carry shame due to events of the past – I know I do. These events often solidify the shame and prove our lack of worth.

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So how do we move forward? How do we quit this self-sabotaging behavior that is standing in the way of growth, of success and at the end-of-the-day happiness?

Well this, my friend is part of the reason for me writing this particular blog today. I need to be vulnerable, I need to shine a light on my shame and give it no-where to hide and fester (as it does). Nothing good comes from keeping it hidden and not speaking of it. I don’t mean to unpack all this onto a poor unsuspecting bunch (like any of you radical folk reading this), but I need for this truth to be out in the stratosphere. If nothing else I’m using this medium to expose my weakness in the hopes that it might become my strength!

I’m a constant work-in-progress, one day I hope to shake the shitty habit of self-sabotage. So here’s to vulnerability eh? Let’s not keep our shame behind closed doors! Let’s let it out! Let’s let it go down to the park, and exorcise itself into oblivion.

So I decided to start a blog post. I had a whole kaleidoscope of ideas twirling through my mind. I’d close my eyes and see myself typing away, coming up with ‘the next greatest thing to hit the net than this http://trumpdonald.org‘, (look it up in your browser, it’s errrmazin).

The only thing is I wasn’t focusing on the content, just the ‘me creating the content’ bit. Which is not all that useful!

So… cut to me talking myself up on my Facebook page:

“Roll up, Roll up! Greatest literary scholar ever to bless your existence with their words” I imagined the newspaper pages swirling towards you as they display a myriad of headlines along the lines of:

‘Asha The Great’ or ‘Asha Collins for Nobel Peace Prize’

Yet, here I sit…waiting for the good old ‘inspiration fairy’ to tickle my grey matter and make strong my funny bone!

‘Write’ they say, just write and KEEP writing! Well I take that advice, as I would the slap of a glove from any man/woman/gender-neutral human/child/or defenceless animal – DEAD SERIOUSLY!

So here I begin, just like Bilbo Baggins before me. I’m off on an adventure and you are all welcome to join me!

I’m undergoing a process of rebirth, re-worth, and re-writing in my life (on both a smaller and larger scale). So I won’t promise that every blog post will be flippant and fluffy, or that I won’t embellish the crap out of some relatively innocuous story.

I WILL promise to tell it like I see it, which means with a large serve of Collins tainted comedy genius! *

The girl walks silently into her bedroom, sits down on the bed holding a strange shiny black orb firmly in her hands. Squeezing her eyes tightly closed she forms a question in her mind. With all the fabric of her being, she focuses on this one question.

For a short moment, she becomes dazed and she remembers that she must continue to breathe. In. Out. Slow and steadly. Exhaling evenly she turns the black orb in her hand.

One section of the orb is flat, and more than that it seems to be translucent.

All her attention is focused on the orb as she stares into the flattened part of the cold black ball.

Something begins to appear. Emerging from the black liquid inside the ball is a shape, a triangle etched with text.

She inhales sharply.

Lifting herself onto her feet she tilts her head to the side. Across her face dances the light from the crack of the open door.

“Yeah, I’ll have a cuppa. Ta!”

haha ;0)

So right now, I’m going to throw around some ideas and like a magic 8 ball Ima shake them about and see what brilliance happens to float to the top.

Love you x

*No other Collins’ are responsible for the potential lack of content quality in this blog.